“We never left bitcoin,” says Circle president Sean Neville. It’s a statement big bitcoin believers might dispute based on the company’s history. “We believe in bitcoin. Everything that we’re doing is based on crypto assets and underlying blockchain technology. We’re not necessarily bitcoin maximalists, it’s not necessarily the perfect thing for everything that we’re doing, but it’s extremely valuable and a core component of what we’re doing.”

Screens from the Circle Pay app (L) and the Circle Invest app

Speaking to Yahoo Finance back in February, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire rattled off a list of Circle’s competitors: “In the social payments space, it’s companies like Square Cash or Venmo. In cross-currency payments, which we enable people to do instantly for free, it might be a company like TransferWise. Circle Invest, which is not yet launched, will compete certainly with products like Coinbase.com, or Robinhood’s latest crypto offering.”

But it is Coinbase, the No. 1 mainstream crypto brokerage in America with 20 million users, that Circle appears to be setting its sights on more than any other competitor.

Coinbase is the best-known choice for newbies who want to dip a toe into bitcoin. Neville describes Circle Invest in the same terms: “It’s aimed at someone who wants to get involved in trading crypto assets but needs somewhat of a guided experience. We provide things like custody. It’s a really simple way to acquire multiple kinds of tokens in just a couple of taps.”

As for the growing crypto competition, Neville says, “I think a lot of us are kicking the shins of the same giants together. If we think about this as a new internet for finance, there need to be multiple players… There’s room for a lot of experimentation and collaboration, even though there is competition.”

Last month, Circle added a “buy the market” feature on its Circle Invest app that lets users simply choose an amount to invest and disperse it equally into all seven coins Circle Invest currently supports. Robinhood Crypto has a similar feature; Coinbase, for now, does not.